In his private Hub City lab, cutting-edge biochemist Dr. Payton Westlake worked with a small team of faithful assistants, including his beloved wife Julie, on a breakthrough synthetic skin formula that would revolutionize medical science. Strong, versatile, and resilient, Westlake's artificial skin cells were also so adaptable they would never be rejected by a patient's body. The formula promised to give burn victims an immediate new lease on life, while also providing an important first step in the creation of rejection-free artificial organs.

    The only stumbling block was that the synthetic skin cells were exceptionally photo-sensitive and would break down rapidly after only 99 minutes of exposure to  direct light. Nevertheless, Dr. Westlake was completely optimistic. After all, he and his assistants had triumphed over so many other, much more dire problems, that this one seemed almost.... cute. Westlake even privately confided to his old professor and mentor, Dr. Hieronymous Joy, during a visit to MIT that he had the formula all but locked up. He was sure that he and his team would lick the problem within a year.

    They never got the chance.

    Late one night, as the team stayed to watch their latest formula stubbornly disintegrate after 99 minutes, a group of savage, gun-wielding thugs broke into the lab. The gang's sadistic leader, Durant, coldly interrogated Dr. Westlake. Durant wanted all of the of the team's hard-won research on the synthetic skin formula or he would kill all of Westlake's assistants. Westlake complied, but it made no difference. Westlake was then held him down and forced to watch as all his friends, including his wife, were brutally slain by Durant's henchmen. The thugs then gleefully beat Westlake into unconsciousness, tossing him around the lab and plunging him into vats of boiling chemicals used to brew the synthetic skin. Before leaving with Westlake's  research notes, Durant ordered his men to arrange a "lab accident" to cover their tracks. The thugs opened the valves to the lab's canisters of combustible gases and left a smoldering fire to ignite the fumes. Dr. Westlake came to a few moments later and and tried to crawl away, but it was too late.

    The lab exploded, blasting Westlake high into the air. He plummeted like a falling star into Lake Bounty, near the shore, and his floating, horribly burned body was soon found by fishermen. Miraculously, he had survived and was rushed to Hub City Memorial. With third degree burns over 95% of his body, the doctors were amazed that this John Doe was even still alive. They had no way of knowing that the synthetic skin chemicals the thugs had immersed Westlake in had served to insulate and stabilize his now ravaged flesh, cushioning his system and preventing the fatal case of shock that anyone else would have immediately lapsed into. Westlake was extraordinarily "lucky."

    The first fruit of this luck was incalculable pain. Pain so total and debilitating, the doctors had no choice but radical and experimental brain surgery that severed Westlake's pain receptors. Hub City just happened to be the home of one of the nation's leading neural surgeons, who always welcomed opportunities to polish his skills in cutting edge procedures. Again Westlake's "luck" was in evidence. After the surgery, Westlake felt no pain. Or anything else for that matter.

    Drifting in and out of a coma, Westlake heard the doctors and interns speak and whisper about him. Sometimes they spoke like he was a curiosity.... a freak! He burned with a ceaseless, berserk rage he could not control and his arms surged with a strength he had never known before. He broke the straps holding him to his bed and ran from the hospital.

    Out into the dark.

    Westlake quickly learned that his lab's explosion had indeed been quickly filed away by Hub City's beleaguered police force as a simple, if tragic, lab accident. There had been funerals for his wife and friends; even him. He shrunk awake from society; a shadowy figure in black trench coat and hat, his repulsive, horribly burned appearance hidden by layers of white cotton bandages.

    His life destroyed, Westlake obsessed over thoughts of vengeance.  He worked carefully.... quietly. He rebuilt his lab in a deserted warehouse and began plotting the obliteration of those who had stolen everything from him. Even then, though, a small part of him hoped for redemption and wanted nothing more than to rebuild his life.

    The last hope for this lay in his skin formula. Recreating it in his warehouse lab, Westlake devised a new technique that allowed him to make awesomely realistic masks. Due to the chemicals that had been flash burned into his body by the lab explosion, he found that the cells of the masks bonded naturally and completely with the exposed musculature of his face and allowed him a natural and fully convincing range of facial expressions. Using these masks, he could cover his horrendous visage and walk the streets again. This, he hoped, would be his path back into the light.

    The light, of course, was precisely the problem.

    Limited to a mere 99 minutes per mask during the day, Westlake very soon realized that his masks would go a lot farther in the night. Besides, there were deeds that needed to be done there; deeds night's darkness would perfectly complement.

    So, Westlake began creating new masks: Masks that were perfect replicas of the men who visited him and his wife a mere month earlier. He developed new skills: Stealth, mimicry.... He became a shadow, a phantom; haunting his tormentors' lives, lurking just on the edge of perception. A dark wraith watching from rooftops and a trusted lieutenant walking right beside them. He listened to their every word, surveyed their every move. He gathered his intelligence and he waited.

    Then he struck.

    Sometimes it was one at time--feeling no pain and with his rage fueling incredible bursts of strength, Westlake was a fearsome hand-to-hand opponent--but he especially delighted on taking them on in groups. There, his true power--deceit--was brought to bear.

    He led them into fiendish traps, where their own distrust and greed would spark violence and suspicion. He stole millions from them and left them blaming each other. He framed them and laughed in a deep, rasping rattle as they started to kill one other.

    Most of Durant's gang was dead before they even realized they were under attack. Ignorant of what exactly was stalking them--all they had were fragmentary, panicked reports of a man in the dark picking them off one by one--they withdrew into the slums of Hub City, intending to hide and wait it out. But Westlake was relentless and would not stop hunting them. It was during the last stages of this pursuit (as he tracked down Durant, himself) that Westlake crossed paths with the JLA as they investigated the "Dancing Skeletons" murder.

    Facing off with Durant, Westlake was finally able to learn why he and his friends and loved ones had been killed. It seemed that Durant had been hired by a Doctor Bernie Peck to steal Westlake's skin formula secrets and murder everyone at the lab. Durant didn't know why Peck wanted the formula, but did know that Peck owed the mob substantial gambling debts. Durant also revealed that Peck worked for the Stagg R&D Institute before Westlake showed Durante his true face and exacted vengeance.

    Westlake then traveled to Stagg R&D and found ideal cover for breaking into the installation provided by both the Fearsome Foursome and the JLA. Once inside he found Bernie Peck and, eschewing subtlety, pointedly demanded answers.

    It turned out that Peck had also been working on a synthetic skin formula. The problem was that his formula was a dead-end disaster. Out of ideas, his job on the line and the mob waiting to pounce, Peck was approached by Dr. Hieronymous Joy. Joy offered Peck a working synthetic skin formula, in exchange for the plans to an experimental power cell that Stagg R&D was producing. Peck jumped at the idea and Joy, through intermediaries, brought Peck and Durant's gang together. Joy was even the one who made the helpful observation that the only way the plan would work was if Westlake, and everyone else who knew his formula intimately, died during the theft.

    Enraged by his mentor's baffling betrayal, Westlake went on a mad spree of destruction through Stagg R&D, leaving Peck to die in his own burning laboratory, just as he had been.

    Peck was rescued from this fate by Daredevil, only to be killed a few minutes later, when Westlake spied him laying outside the building. Westlake was pursued by Harley Quinn, but eluded her by taking the guise of a Stagg security man; the persona he had originally planed to use to gain entrance to the facility before the FF and JLA arrived.

    Slipping away during the chaos at Stagg, Westlake made his way to Dr. Joy's rental house, hoping to confront the true source of all his misery. He found the house empty, but spied a heavily annotated diagram of the Blue Beetle's scarab in Joy's study. Hearing on a radio report that Beetle was being rushed to Hub City Memorial Hospital after a battle with the Crimson Dynamo, Westlake gambled that Joy might strike there next. While just missing Joy, Westlake arrived at the hospital in time to tangle with Joy's servitor, the Black Knight, as it attempted to kill a depowered Blue Beetle. Clearly out of his league fighting the ebony horror, Westlake simply worked to distract the Black Knight as Daredevil rushed Blue Beetle to safety.

    Later, Westlake again met up with Blue Beetle and Daredevil as they investigated Joy's house. There, the Joker sent a radio message addressing Westlake by name and offering help. Hearing his own name again effected Westlake greatly, and when he slipped away from the JLA, his thoughts were, for the first time in a long time, not centered on revenge.

    Westlake returned to his warehouse lab and sat by the window that looked out onto Hub City for a long time. He had dined on his anger for so long, but it was now almost spent. Was that anger all he had left? And if so, what would happen to him after he killed Joy? What would he become?

    What had he already become?

    But there was no time for these questions, he decided. All that was left was justice and that would have to be enough. Justice for the man who had killed him--all the best parts of him. Justice for the man who might yet kill so many more.

    Joy.

    He would find him. If he didn't, the JLA would. And when Joy was found, he would die. Just like Durant and Peck and all the others who kill the helpless. All those who go out every day and murder innocence itself.

    Death to the bringers of death.

    He went through the window, out into the night.

    Into the dark.

    Darkman was eventually approached by CURE and induced into becoming a member of their Suicide Squad. This uneasy association lasted for more than a year, but ended when Darkman became aware that CURE was systematically tampering with the minds of its operatives, erasing their memories of CURE. Before CURE could carry out this procedure on him, Darkman vanished utterly and completely. Despite the very best efforts of CURE, his current whereabouts and activities remain stubbornly unknown.